Moving On
by Lara Reed
Summary: Could Bester have caused Garibaldi to betray Sheridan if there hadn't been existing cracks in their relationship?In this story, set following the events in "In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum", Garibaldi's latent doubts about the Captain's behavior first surface. Just what is it about Sheridan that is troubling him?


Disclaimer: I'm borrowing the characters of Babylon 5 for a brief journey back to the second season. No copyright infringement is intended,

Moving On

Stephen Franklin wasn't a morning person by nature, yet during his years serving in Earth Force he'd learned that there were definite advantages inherent in getting an early start to the day. Most mornings he still had to drag himself out of bed, but once he made it to the mess, there was generally no one ahead of him in line and the food was fresh- albeit not especially appetizing.

On this particular morning, the breakfast offerings had a surprisingly enticing aroma. Hoping that he wouldn't regret it later, he allowed the counter person to fill his tray with a little bit of everything that was arrayed before him. Franklin paid for his meal and headed across the nearly empty room towards what had become "the usual table" that he shared with his fellow members of the command staff.

Michael Garibaldi was already seated there with a dour expression on his face. The doctor's hopes that the tensions that had arisen between the security chief and the Captain over Sheridan's demand that Morden be illegally detained had dissipated once the prisoner had been released were quickly fading.

Franklin was known for having an excellent bedside manner with his patients, and so he decided to attempt to use his people skills to draw out his brooding colleague and friend. Ignoring the petulant look on the chief's face, he smiled at him briefly, seated himself on the opposite side of the table and said, "Good morning".

"Good morning? Is it really? I'm not so sure," questioned Garibaldi irritably. He rapped his fingers along the edge of his tray of untouched food. He leaned forward slightly, almost challenging Franklin to remain chipper in his presence.

Determined to not be baited into an argument, the doctor dived into his meal rather than replying. After downing what he believed to be a forkful of actual pork sausage, a rare commodity indeed aboard the station, he looked up at his tablemate. "This tastes really good, and so I'd say that my day has started off fairly well. What's bugging you?"

Garibaldi was unwilling to allow himself to be distracted by a good meal that he was too wound up to enjoy, so he pushed his tray away to his left and then met Franklin's appraising glance. "Where is the big man?"

"You mean the Captain?"

"Who else would I be referring to? He's the only morning person in our little circle…and these command-performance group breakfasts were his idea, and now he isn't even here yet. He-"

"Whoa, Michael, slow down! Our meeting for breakfast started right after he arrived, and when you were still in a coma," Stephen tried to explain calmly."

"So what," the chief snarled, before taking a large drink from the coffee cup that he had a strangle hold on.

"So, what you couldn't know was that meeting for breakfast wasn't his idea. Ivanova thought that it would give him a chance to get to know us, since when he first arrived, she was the only friend that he had on the station. I've enjoyed getting to know him, and you probably would also if you gave him a real chance," Stephen ventured optimistically.

"Are you accusing me of not giving Sheridan a fair shot? I've given him a chance, but he isn't…" Garibaldi looked down at his tray with renewed interest in order to hide his reluctance to continue their conversation. The good doctor wouldn't allow his friend to avoid dealing with the crux of what was truly coming between the security chief and their new C.O.

"Don't stop now, what's really bothering you is that Sheridan is here and Jeff Sinclair isn't. That isn't the Captain's fault, he didn't ask for this command."

"How can you be so sure?" Garibaldi slammed his cup down on the table and glared at Stephen.

"Maybe, he can't be sure, but I can tell you definitively," Ivanova asserted from behind, her presence taking both men by surprise. "The Captain was comfortable commanding the Agamemnon, he thrives on action, and he had no desire to be posted to what is a largely diplomatic and bureaucratic position. Sheridan didn't seek this job, and even if he'd turned it down, Jeff would still be gone. Get over it!"

"That's easy for you to say," countered a slightly less hostile Garibaldi. "He's your friend."

"And he could be your friend, too." The commander sat down at the table. Susan had seen that the two men agreed about many things and often enjoyed each others' company, but she wondered if Garibaldi could ever fully accept a new C.O. "Aside from his not being Jeff, what else do you have against the Captain?"

Garibaldi helped himself to a heaping forkful of what were now lukewarm scrambled eggs. He washed it down with a large swig of coffee. _I may as well answer her question. With the two of them ganging up on me, there's very little chance that they're gonna drop the subject,_ he mused to himself. "If you must know, it's because the man has been trouble since he first arrived on B5."

"And this from the man whose life he helped to save when he'd only been here for two weeks," observed the doctor who was tired of merely witnessing his colleagues verbal sparring.

"Who asked him to," challenged Garibaldi half-heartedly.

"Nobody asked him to…that's my point. He's a good man who is willing to risk his life to save someone else's life," countered an increasingly frustrated Stephen.

"That's it in a nutshell- Sheridan routinely puts his life on the line on my watch. Susan, you said it yourself; 'he thrives on action'. He's drawn to dangerous situations, and while it's my job to rescue him, he has no business placing himself at risk unnecessarily. Someday, I may not get to him in time to save his ass."

"He's aware of that, and he knows that the day may come when the cavalry won't get there in time to save him," Ivanova defended Sheridan, in spite of the fact that his risk-taking nature often unnerved her as well.

"When that day comes," the chief rounded on her, "it'll be my career that's on the line when Earth Force demands to know why my C.O. is dead?"

"Your career won't be affected, the Captain takes full responsibility for all of his actions," Ivanova stated evenly.

"Oh, so I shouldn't worry about anything that _Mr. I Take Full Responsibility_ does," Garibaldi challenged bitterly. "Are you suggesting that we should all just look the other way whenever he decides to take matters into his own hands and the regs be damned?" As his voice rose, the other people in the mess began to look in their direction.

"Keep your voice down," Franklin admonished. He was glad that his friend was finally opening up about his concerns about Sheridan, but he didn't want their conversation to get heated enough to turn into a scene witnessed by junior officers.

"You haven't gotten over the Morden flap yet. There was no long term damage done-the Captain let him go after he had time to simmer down. I wish that he'd acted reasonably, and I certainly let him know that I disagreed with his actions, but I can understand why he did what he did."

"I'm not heartless, I empathize with him, and I can understand that losing his wife might have pushed him into doing things he wouldn't do otherwise, but…" Garibaldi returned his attention to his nearly empty coffee cup, leaving the rest of his thought unspoken.

"But what?" Susan probed, wanting to drag all of his feelings out into the open.

Having gone as far as he had thus far, Garibaldi blurted out the rest, "Jeez, it's been two years and he's only now going through some of his wife's stuff. He needs to get on with his life. I don't expect him to start a serious relationship, but he ought to find a woman or several women…and see some action. It'll do him good, keep him busy, and hopefully curb his desire to seek out dangerous situations just to make him feel alive."

Franklin and Ivanova remained silent, but they didn't entirely disagree with Garibaldi's assessment that Sheridan could do with a gentle push towards moving past his grief. They resolved, independently of each other, to introduce Sheridan to some possible candidates for female companionship.

Roughly one month later, Garibaldi was sitting in his office in the wee hours of the morning watching the security monitors. He was covering the shift of one of his men who had come down with a stomach virus, and so this amounted to a second shift for him during the same twenty-four period. He was on the brink of nodding off when he caught movement on one of the cameras in green sector. He focused on the screen in time to see Sheridan exiting Delenn's quarters with a very contented expression on his face.

Having no way of knowing that the pair had spent the entire night talking, Garibaldi jumped to an obvious, albeit, incorrect assumption about how the Captain and the Minbari ambassador had spent their time.

 _I was right about Sheridan! The man has a knack for finding trouble. There are a quarter of a million people on this station and he chooses the one woman who is likely to cause an interstellar dust-up if people find out about them. Now, I'm going to have to protect him from an entirely different kind of danger. Maybe, I should have left well enough alone?_


End file.
